four. [action]

[aunomdedieu.livejournal.com]

[ After spending a couple of days indoors, Caprica decides to go out — partly just to get out of the house that is and isn't hers, partly because she has some supplies that need refreshing. It's a pristine morning, the sun full and high overhead — only one of many pristine mornings in a place that can, at times, seem unnaturally perfect. When the Gardens' residents aren't being attacked by monsters or bloodthirsty flowers, at any rate.

She nearly trips on something in the path as she walks, which is incredibly rare; it isn't a characteristic normally ascribed to Sixes, or Cylons in general, this startling lack of grace. Caprica catches herself before she can fall, nearly before she can even stumble, and pauses, glancing down to see what was underfoot.

It's a dead cat. Caprica would nearly think it had been killed by one of the other wild animals here, or by another resident by accident, except for the incredibly methodical way the corpse has been mutilated. It looks like it's been dead for some days now; it's starting to decompose, rotten flesh and rotten organs.

She has seen dead things before — dead animals, dead people. She's killed with her bare hands before. But Caprica is not a sadist, and that's what she'd have to be to ever perpetrate something this gruesome. Her stomach twists and she presses a hand to her mouth, takes a step back. ]


[ OOC: lol I did not realize there had already been one of these today, oh well. I meant to post this earlier and got sidelined. Come be horrified with Caprica. Or don't. :/ ]

Comments

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

[Mahalia nods, looking down at the cat.]

Yes, it is.

[She looks up at Caprica again, and, seeing her hand, reaches up to place her own over it. Her family have always comforted each other through touch, it's a familiar and welcome thing to her. Even if Caprica is a stranger, she had reached out, and that is enough in Mahalia's eyes.]

I'm just... [Tired. She gives a sad little smile.] I keep finding more. I keep hoping each one is the last one, but then, there's another.

[aunomdedieu.livejournal.com]

[ Comfort through touch is also very familiar to Caprica, and she laces her fingers through Mahalia's briefly, before giving her an equally sad and tiny smile and letting her hand drop.

She's quiet for a moment longer before speaking up again. ]

Should we bury it?

[ The question almost sounds a little hesitant. Caprica is not used to burying anything — Cylons don't bury their dead, not when the body is not as important as the consciousness that was retrieved from inside it at the moment of death, not when there are copies upon copies of each of them — but she thinks this might be the right thing to do. If nothing else there's a practical reason, to avoid attracting whatever scavengers there might be in the Gardens. ]

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

[Mahalia stays beside Caprica for a moment longer, gathering herself. She'd been really quite glad for that moment of comfort, but it hadn't lingered, and there was another grave to dig. She nods. She already has a garden trough in her other hand, had gone into the wilds quickly to fetch the dirt to make it, after burying two of the cats with her hands alone.]

Yes.

[She moves forward, kneeling down beside the cat's body. This one is one of the worst she's seen, the longest dead, already ripped apart and now well into the decomposition process. But she holds her stomach well enough, only wonders how she's going to move it, can't bury it right beside the path like this. She only really has one option, and reaches up to untie her headscarf to wrap the body in.]

I've been burying them, all the ones I could find. They deserve better than this.

[Deserve better than being murdered and butchered meaninglessly in the first place, but the abandoned corpses and the further mutilation Mahalia had seen on the vine was only more heartless disrespect.]

[aunomdedieu.livejournal.com]

[ She watches, as Mahalia unwinds the scarf from her hair. After a moment she kneels down, gently touches the girl's wrist. ]

Here, let me.

[ Mahalia has done this by herself enough. Caprica takes the scarf from her hands and begins to wrap the dead cat in it, a little gingerly, but her hands are steady and careful. ]

There's a place over there— [ She turns a little, and if Mahalia follows her gaze, she'll see a patch of dirt underneath a nearby rosebush, a few feet off the side of the path. ]

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

[She's a little surprised when the woman kneels down beside her, but she relinquishes the scarf quietly, watching as she wraps the cat's body.]

Thank you.

[She follows where the woman looks.]

Yes, that looks nice.

[She stands and moves over to the indicated spot, kneeling down again, starts digging with the little trough. When the hole is big enough, she stands again, begins quickly gathering flowers from the area nearby; roses, daffodils, daisies and crocuses. She knows the meanings, but disregards them, for this. It's the gift and the respect that matters.]